ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain.
Sec. Resilience
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frsus.2025.1601933
From Symbolic Inclusion to Shared Governance: Contesting Conservation in a Climate-Stressed South African Landscape
Provisionally accepted
- University of Fort Hare, East London, South Africa
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Conservation areas are increasingly seen as crucial for addressing biodiversity loss and climate change, yet their expansion often produces socio-economic tensions with adjacent communities, particularly where governance is exclusionary. This study examines perceptions of equity, resource access, and governance among rural communities and private game reserve officials in the Makana Local Municipality, Eastern Cape, South Africa. It also investigates how climate variability intensifies these challenges by deepening local vulnerability. Guided by vulnerability and participatory governance theory, the study adopted a qualitative, interpretivist approach. Data were collected between July and August 2024 through 58 in-depth interviews with community members, 2 focus group discussions and 5 key informant interviews with conservation managers and community leaders. The study focused on communities surrounding Amakhala and Lalibela Game Reserves, including Alicedale, Seven Fountains, and Kraabos. Findings reveal that while some benefits from conservation existsuch as employment and limited outreach, these are perceived as symbolic, precarious, and inequitably distributed. Communities report restricted access to land, water, and sacred sites, with governance processes experienced as opaque and exclusionary. Climate variability, particularly erratic rainfall and drought, exacerbates these vulnerabilities by undermining agricultural livelihoods and intensifying resource scarcity. The study concludes that socially just and climate-resilient conservation in South Africa requires a shift from rhetorical inclusion to meaningful participation, transparent governance, and equitable benefit-sharing. Aligning conservation with local rights, needs, and adaptive capacities is essential for enhancing both biodiversity protection and community resilience.
Keywords: Conservation governance; participatory governance, Benefit-sharing, Equity, conservation, Eastern cape
Received: 28 Mar 2025; Accepted: 17 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 MAPHOSA, Effossou and Moyo. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: MANDLENKOSI MAPHOSA, University of Fort Hare, East London, South Africa
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.